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Did you get your Palm Beach County property tax discount? If not, you might have goofed

All but a handful of the property tax payments mailed before the Nov. 30 deadline to receive a 4 percent discount have been processed by now, the office of Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon said Friday.

Those few, spokeswoman Karen Clarke said, are “out-sorts.” They’re payments that didn’t zip through the automatic processing and have to be processed by hand. Such as mailing two checks in the same envelope, using paper clips or staples, or mailing payment in an envelope other than the official return envelope the tax collector supplied.

In some cases, you did something really wrong, and it’s going to cost you your discount. Such as: (these all actually happen):

Mailing a check with the wrong amount or failing to sign it. If you write a proper check after the deadline, no discount for you.

Mailing a check that bounces after the deadline. Again, the discount goes bye-bye. On top of that, you’ll have to write a check with “certified funds,” meaning a money order, certified check or cashier’s check.

Stuffing your check inside the tax collector’s original envelope and putting it in the mail with the idea that it would come back as “returned mail,” saving you a postage stamp. If the tax collector didn’t discover your subterfuge in the thousands of its returned mailings until after Nov. 30, that half-dollar just cost you your discount.